August Stamp of the Month Blog Hop

Hello and welcome to our Close to my Heart Stamp of the Month blog hop. Isn't this a fun event every month? If you've arrived here from Lori's Blog you're in the right place. This month's stamp set is Something Splendid and indeed it is. Most of the wonderful artwork you'll see today will show off the very unique and pretty two step flower on this set but I concentrated on the little flower in the set, just right for random stamping! I made a bookmark and I'll show it first for those of you who want to just see the artwork and the directions and story will be below for the people who enjoy that! Have fun and then hop on over to Haley's Blog to see what beautiful project she has for you!

P.S. If you get lost, Helen Onulak has the whole list right HERE!

Now for those of you who want the "how to," let me tell you a little about what prompted me to make a bookmark. I recently returned from our Close to my Heart convention and before we met we all drew names to make roommate gifts! Just before the results of the drawing came in I joked that whomever made a gift for me needed to spend a lot of time and money! Well, my upline, Michelle said she hoped she'd get me and she'd make sure I received a really cute bookmark. She didn't end up drawing me but at our team meeting in the convention lobby she gave me one just the same. So did three other girls at the meeting. All through the entire convention people came up to me with bookmarks. It was quite an extended joke and I enjoyed it tremendously. I'll stick a picture of all my bookmarks down at the end of this post if you'd like to see them.

For the bookmark made with Something Splended stamps I actually had a purchased bookmark that I found at a Staples. I love precut projects, anything that saves me work is number one on my list! You can make one yourself, of course. This one measures about 2 1/4" by 6". You could round the corners of the bookmark or even cut if fancier if you want.

I'm giving you a sneak peek of four of the new fall and winter colors but, sorry, I'm not giving out the names yet. All I can say is that you're going to be wowed! Take the smallest flower on the stamp set and ink it with a purple ink (hydrangea will work) and stamp in as if you could draw a triangle between the flowers, do this over and over to randomly stamp in a slightly unrandom way.

Do the same with the next two colors (watermelon and ocean will do although that's not what these are, hee hee). Fill in, still trying to think in a "triangular" pattern with the flowers.

Now fill in the centers with the tiny little dot stamp in the set and feel free to use sweet leaf ink if you like.

Use this wiry sponge to make tiny purple specks to fill in the white spaces. Distress the edges with purple ink too!

Now cut 3 strips of matching blue paper 1/2" by 2 1/4" and glue them down about an inch from the top and 1/4" apart from each other. Cut two other strips out of the green paper using the same measurements and put them under the blue ones about 1/4" apart too.

Using a ruffled circle punch or regular circle punch (or even a square punch, whatever you have) cut out some white cardstock. I then cut a second one in purple and angled it slightly in back of the white piece so just a bit showed through. Distress and attach in the center of the three blue strips.

I'm absolutely in love with the Irresistibles chipboard designs we have now. With just a little sponge and ink you can make the prettiest embellishments. I used the blue and green here and layered them on top of each other then put them smack in the middle of the white ruffled circle. For your bookmark you could just simply stamp a cute design or sentiment on the circle or use your paper flowers, brads, buttons, whatever you have.

Attach your embellishment to the white circle.
Poke a hole at the top of the bookmark. I used a brad but you could use an eyelet and a ribbon for yours if you like. Stick a little sparkle in the middle of your flower if you made one. Stamp Enjoy Life onto a piece of white cardstock measuring just over a 1/2" by 1 3/4", distress and attach near the bottom of your bookmark.

Here's my collection of convention bookmarks! Thanks to all my girlfriends who made them for me!